This past Saturday was about 26% above the previous Saturday's rail ridership. Bus ridership was the same. Teabag day didn't even come close to ridership levels for a regular weekday with commuters.

There were about 137,000 extra trips (that would include both to and from trips) the past Saturday over the previous one, meaning probably around 68,500 excess round trips on the subway this weekend compared to last. I wouldn't attribute all that transit to the TeaBag event, and one would have to figure in the people who drove, but that seems in line with official estimates of around 60-70 thousand protestors on Friday. Also, there were other events that same Saturday 9/12 (American triathlon and Black Family Reunion), so ridership would have been up for them, too.

However, it's apparent there was no huge unparalled ridership surge on Saturday that would have come from more than 100,000 protestors.

None of the above is meant to estimate the numbers of people there on Saturday. It' s just to show that those estimating some huge crowd of over a hundred thousand or even a million are smoking weed from another planet.

---* I realize Metro gives the same figures for bus ridership on both Saturdays 9/5 and 9/12. I'm presuming that's an artifact of how they count their ridership and not an indication that the number of trips were precisely the same -- still it's the figure they give both days.